3/31/2010

Army Physician Says, "I Am a Fucking Idiot. Now Watch Me Poop":

Who is this brave fellow in the photo? He is Army Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, and he "serves as Chief of Primary Care and Flight Surgeon for the DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic and is lead Flight Surgeon charged with caring for Army Chief of Staff General Casey's pilots and air crew." And he's got medals and ribbons and whatnots, too. All kinds of flare for his uniform. But Lakin is about to disobey orders because he's all het up about something.

What has Lt. Col. Lakin so pissed that he's willing to go to jail? Is it that he's about to be re-deployed to Afghanistan and now believes the war is a mad clusterfuck that we can't possibly "win" in any sense of the word? Oh, no. From a press release the Rude Pundit received from the American Patriot Foundation (motto: "Questioning the citizenship of men who become president since 2008"), Lakin said, "I am today compelled to make the distasteful choice to invite my own court martial, in pursuit of the truth about the president’s eligibility under the constitution to hold office."

In other words, "I am a fucking idiot."

Assuming this story is real and true (and there's documents and shit that back it up), well, it's just birther paradise: "Mr. Obama’s continuing refusal to release his original 1961 birth certificate has brought Lt. Col. Lakin to the point where he feels his orders are unlawful, and thus MUST be disobeyed. Lakin has today informed his superiors that he cannot understand how his oath of office to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution' does not permit military officers to pursue proof of eligibility from his commander-in-chief." To help the cause, the patriots at the American Patriot Foundation are gonna demonstrate their patriotism by setting up a legal fund in order to defend Lakin during his patriotic trial.

Lt. Col. Lakin has been beating this horse corpse since October of 2008, when he first "started to learn more about the issues and concerns" regarding President Obama's "real" place of birth. He says that he was going to volunteer to deploy to Iraq with his old unit, but then decided not to as he "sought out opinions from supervisors, friends and family." Finally, after being ignored by the Army's legal assistance office, probably because they thought, "This guy's a fucking idiot, and we've got all these cases of sexual assault to cover-up," he filed a formal Article 138 complaint, which is for grievances against commanding officers. He even got his congressman, Zach Wamp of Fuck-a-Mule, Tennessee, to forward the complaint to the Department of Defense.

And what was Lakin told? To hush his mouth because no one wants to admit the horrible truth about our secret Indonesian Muslim overlord? Good god, how deep did the nightmare go? Oh, wait. No, he was just told that Barack Obama wasn't his commanding officer, according to the Army regulations on military justice, and therefore his grievance was bullshit. That was in April 2009.

Remember, though, that Lt. Col. Lakin is a fucking idiot and he wants everyone to watch him poop because it makes him so proud. He is in maniacal pursuit of Obama's mysterious birth certificate of mystery. Because, you know, if the birthers saw another damn document, they'd just go away. So he filed the same complaint against Army Chief of Staff General George Casey. And in December 2009, he got the exact same fucking answer: Casey doesn't meet the definition of "commanding officer."

A smart man might just walk the fuck away. And Lakin must have some shitty "friends, leaders, [and] supervisors". Because if they didn't tell him to walk the fuck away, then they must be laughing behind his back, wondering how far they could push the fucking idiot. Goddamn, that must be great, drinking and guffawing about how Lakin actually believed them when they said, "Oh, no, Terry, you need to stand up for what you believe." It's like betting a dumb college student that he can't drink a gallon of milk. Sit back and watch the explosive vomit.

Don't worry, though, dear Lt. Col. Fucking Idiot. The American Patriot Foundation just wants to make $50,000 in ten days in order to defend your idiot ass. It's what patriots do.

3/30/2010

Right Wing Vs. Left Wing Violence: Conservatives Desperately Try to Justify:Around 7:30 a.m., coffee mug in hand, the Rude Pundit strode into his living room on this goddamned soggy end of March and turned on the TV, clicking over to the ol' MSNBC and Morning Starbucks with Joe in order stare at Mika Brzezinski's tits as a start to the day. Instead of Brzezinski's sneering disapproval of his gaze, the Rude Pundit was greeted by a jowly Pat Buchanan, his neck sag flapping back and forth like laundry on the line. Buchanan was raging against those who are upset about violent right wing rhetoric and actions. In essence, Buchanan was saying, you think a few bricks through windows and a bit of spittle and nasty words are bad? He compared the recent actions to the Weather Underground and National Guard post bombings and to some time where protesters in DC blocked the streets with logs while he was just trying to get home from a hard day at work making sure that Richard Nixon's taint was kept powdered and dry.

"Huh," the Rude Pundit thought as he sucked down the java. "That pathetic apologist for all things evil is right. Throwing a brick through a window is not as bad as setting a ROTC office ablaze." Of course, the Obama administration hasn't sent the National Guard to break up a Tea Party protest with batons, teargas, and bullets, but, hey, everything's relative. And then there's that whole Oklahoma City bombing, but, shit, we can't count that, right?

'Cause, see, whenever anyone tries to make some kind of moral equivalence between the actions of leftist protesters in the 1960s and 1970s and those of the teabaggers (or, indeed, the militia movement), they are forgetting context. And context, as we know, will take your sad little rhetorical point and spank its ass until it begs context to stop.

Listen, children: In that time way back when, people were protesting things like the Vietnam War, which was killing hundreds of Americans a month, the invasion of Cambodia, and the ongoing FBI crackdown against radical groups in America, especially civil rights organizations like the Black Panthers. The violence, including the firebombing of buildings, was being carried out by those most directly affected by the actions of the government. If you were a college student-aged male (or older), then the threat of the draft hung over you. To oversimplify here: you could be forced to go and fight a war you knew was useless. And if you refused, you faced arrest or self-imposed exile. You could attempt "conscientious objector" status, but that was hard to come by.

Now, you got that? The federal government could seize you and make you kill people under a pretense of "defense" in a conflict that had long ago been revealed to be based on lies and with no effect on the safety of America. How do you think citizens should react to that? How would people react today if Obama had a draft? Like good patriots marching off to battle? And while we say that violence is never justified, well, shit, at least in this case it was in reaction to actual violent actions by the government. It was, to say the least, about life and death.

Most of the leftist groups that engaged in violence targeted property, not people. Indeed, the accidental deaths of people caused violence as a tactic to be discredited. In the end, after the Vietnam War, it was only splinter groups of assholes, like the Symbionese Liberation Army, who still adhered to any notion that violence was necessary or effective.

What exactly are today's violent protesters angry about? A mandate that all people in this country legally must buy health insurance? That those who can't afford it will get subsidies from the government? Really? Tell you what: in a few years, if anyone dies because of this bill, you can throw some bricks. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and wheel yourselves back home. Stop being easily manipulated tools. And talk to someone who was at Kent State before you jump on the fascism express.

More extreme, and therefore more worrisome, are the genuinely scary nutzoids, the God and guns set, like the Hutaree militia in Michigan, who were getting themselves good and ready for Armageddon, or the idiots who make Wal-Mart richer by stocking up on rifles before Obama takes them away. No action that the Weather Underground ever undertook approaches the amount of evil in a single hair on Timothy McVeigh's rotting head. Like millennialists and survivalists, they are fighting phantoms, finding evidence like ghost hunters who see a reflected light as a spirit's orb or some such shit. All lies and delusions.

You see, if you're gonna be violent, if you're gonna commit crimes as protests, at least do it because something real is occurring. Like, you know, vast numbers of young Americans coming home in body bags. Not because some redneck jerk-off or some power-hungry bitch with Bump Ups in her hair told you they can predict the future.

However, once again, the trap of moral equivalency has been set. Using leftist violence that occurred 40 years ago to excuse violence today is about as bullshit an excuse as saying that it's not so bad that you killed that hobo because Jeffrey Dahmer used to fuck the corpses of his victims.

Later this week: Of course, they're just pissed that Obama's a black man.

3/29/2010

The Rude Pundit on Today's Stephanie Miller Show:Stephanie Miller returned to the radio this week, and she talked to the Rude Pundit about the GOP finding losing intolerable and Catholics finding molestation tolerable.

A Few Things That Just Don't Make Sense:This list is a little more random than usual, but put it all down under "Shit What You Can't Make Heads or Tails Of":

1. So it was fine to condemn Barack Obama for going to the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who said a couple of controversial things. But no one says a word about all the politicians who fail to condemn the Pope, who covered-up for sex crimes, an act that is itself a crime. Indeed, how many Catholic politicians were in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City yesterday to hear Archbishop Timothy Dolan defend Pope Benedict and compare his suffering to Christ's? Maybe black weighs more than white on the scales of outrage.

2. So somewhere around 9000 people gathered in the desert in Nevada this weekend to attack Harry Reid's tiny home town and listen to leather queen Sarah Palin speak about how only stupid people should be president. Many of the people there only had the time and money to make the trip because they are unemployed, retired, or disabled and live off government checks like, you know, unemployment and Social Security. In other words, the federal government is subsidizing the free speech of a bunch of people who are protesting that the government is taking away their freedoms. You're welcome, teabaggers.

3. Speaking of bondage gear, Michael Steele spent $1950 of Republican National Committee funds at Voyeur West Hollywood. Here's how one enthusiastic patron described the club: "There are topless 'dancers' acting out S&M scenes throughout the night on one of the side stages, there's a half-naked girl hanging from a net across the ceiling and at one point I walked to the bathroom and pretty much just stopped dead in my tracks to watch two girls simulating oral sex in a glass case." Obviously, Chairman Steele was there with potential donors in order to discuss health care reform and whether or not breast enhancement should be included.

4. So New York City is so broke that Mayor Bloomberg is blaming budget cuts for the rise in the murder rate. The number of cops has dropped by 5000 since 2000, with another 2000 headed for the chopping block. Yet the city is about to spend $1.4 million sifting through a shitpile of debris from 9/11 to look for a charred tooth or bone splinter in order to assuage the superstitions of a few hundred families who think their loved ones' ghosts are haunting the Fresh Kills landfill or some such shit.

5. Along those lines, why the fuck are we spending a quarter billion dollars on abstinence education when it's a demonstrable failure? You know what would cost less, fiscal conservatives? Abortions.

6. So it seems like the tactic that the right wing has adopted for dealing with the crazies on its side is to contort itself like a topless dancer at Voyeur trying to go down on another dancer inside a glass booth. James Taranto, in the Wall Street Journal (motto: "We were pretty scuzzy fuckwads even before Murdoch bought us"), says, "Not only does Palin's Facebook post not literally put anyone in the crosshairs--we're not even sure this is possible--but it doesn't even include a depiction of any Democrat in crosshairs. Rather, it features a map of the U.S. with stylized crosshairs indicating the districts represented by 20 Democrats." Now that's circus-worthy shit.

What are they gonna say about the Christian militia group just broken up by the FBI in Michigan? The Hutaree wanted to kill cops and blow up their funerals. They were also preparing for the Antichrist to fuck shit up. Is there a right-wing politician ready to knock down this cult-like madness? Or is it just too damn close to the ideology of their base? When will a Republican be told that he or she needs to have a Sister Souljah moment or risk losing the "moderates"? Oh, wait. That implies they still have moderates.

3/28/2010

The Rude Pundit on The Stephanie Miller Show with Hal Sparks from This Past Monday:D'oh. The Rude Pundit just found out that the audio was available from this past week's health care reform gloatfest with Stephanie Miller Show guest host, the smart and lovable Hal Sparks.

3/26/2010

Bill Donohue: Leave the Child Fuckers Alone:As always, the most hilarious remarks about anything where someone whispers a single mean word about the religion known as Catholicism comes from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (motto: "We write press releases by the thousands"). Catholicism, in case you don't know, is a large sect of the Christian faith where practitioners engage in mock cannibalism and vampirism as a way of ingesting bits of their god. One presumes that eventually they must shit out the flesh of Christ and piss out his blood but that it leaves behind some magical residue. (And does that mean the toilet is now blessed? So many questions.)

Oh, and a large number of their priests were able to rape children without going to jail. In fact, because the Catholic leadership saw boy-fucking as more of a social faux pas than a crime where people ought to be sent to prison, cardinals and abbots and costellos and whatever the fuck they have all conspired to cover-up crimes that involved, in various cases, dozens, if not hundreds of victims per rapist. And now that it's been demonstrated that the leader of the whole goddamn religion, a Pope who was once a Nazi, knew that an American priest was fucking deaf kids and refused to stop him, one would think that Catholics would be having one of those soul-searching, "Ah, fuck, can we end this denial?" moments.

Not Bill Donohue. That corn-toothed, fat headed motherfucker has put out statement after statement, screaming that everyone should just back off. On CNN.com last week, just as it was revealed that Pope Benedict participated in the conspiracy to hide the child fucking, Donohue wrote in his bizarro screed, "Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so." Now, remember: we're not talking about a secretary's ass slap. We're talking about a priest shoving his dick into the mouth or ass of preteen boys.

This qualitative difference does not matter to Donohue. In fact, Donohue's entire defense of the Catholic Church rests on a few assumptions and comparisons that can only be described as "fucking mad." See, Donohue says, 30 years ago, we just let the child fuckers go free. And, hey, liberals, all of you say that molesters should get therapy and be rehabilitated, so "Had the Catholic Church simply tossed the offenders out, it would have been branded as heartless." Um, no. We think that people who fuck kids should go to jail and that they should get rehabilitated there. In fact, if you don't go to jail after fucking 200 children, it's called "Getting away with it."

The other comparison that Donohue makes endlessly is that the media is overhyping this while not reporting on all the molesting rabbis. "Just this month, Rabbi Baruch Lebovits was found guilty on eight counts of sexually abusing a Brooklyn boy. Yet the Times, which has run several stories on the decades-old cases in Ireland and Germany, never reported it." Does it need to be explained that one case involves a man who committed a crime and went to prison for it and the other is about a decades-long conspiracy among church leaders to keep silent about thousands of cases of child fucking? Which is the newsworthier?

It's not that Donohue is just factually wrong about so much. It's that he's proudly wrong: "Let's say Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, did in fact learn of the transfer [of the child fucking German priest]. So what? Wasn't that what he expected to happen?" Actually, what he should have expected is that Peter Hullerman would have the cops called on him and that he would be behind bars, like, you know, that rabbi he just mentioned.

But, hey, that's those wacky Catholics and their "beliefs" in "things." Besides, who needs to mock Donohue when he does such a good job on his own. As he writes, "It's a lot sexier to nail the Catholic Church."

3/25/2010

In Brief: Catholic Molestation and Republican Tantrums: Two Rude What-If's:1. What if investigation after investigation discovered that the Muslim church had engaged in a decades-long cover-up of massive criminal activity involving the molestation and raping of children? What if it involved countless Muslim religious leaders, imams, and others? What if one of the highest Sunni leaders in the world was complicit in hiding sex crimes committed against deaf kids? Do you think for a moment that the outrage would not be so massive as to force mosques to close and for schools to go bankrupt? Many, many people would be justifiably jailed. There would be congressional investigations. Republicans would be calling for any faith-based funds to be banned from going to Muslim organizations because, indeed, some of the money may have been indirectly used to pay off victims and to shuffle the perpetrators from city to city. Hell, there would be death threats, vandalism, if not outright violence, against mosques and people. Yes, Islam in America, if not in the West entirely, would be assaulted from all corners.

Of course, because it's the Catholic Church, despite whatever revulsion there is against those who committed the assaults and those who engaged in racketeering by conspiring to hide it from authorities, we are supposed to accept that it's simply the actions of the few and not the infection of the entire faith. Even if it is.

2. What if it was Senate Democrats who, back when Republicans were rubber-stamping every desire of the Bush administration, had slowed down the passage of, say, the Bush tax cuts with huge numbers of useless amendments? What if Democrats had refused to allow committee meetings that had nothing to do with tax policy to occur? What if they threatened to filibuster or put a hold on every nominee of the Bush administration in retaliation? Republicans wouldn't merely have called them "obstructionists" or "the party of 'No'." That's pansy shit. Republicans would have called Democrats "traitors" who care more about pleasing their base than in advancing the cause of liberty or some such shit. Every subcommittee meeting on the military that was postponed would have been portrayed as further demonstration of how much Democrats hate the troops. Every judge not given a vote would have been further proof of how liberals want to jam their radical agenda down the throats of good-hearted, god-lovin' Americans.

But, instead, it's Republicans throwing up the roadblocks like a purse snatcher knocking over trash cans as he's chased by the cops. And, of course, the near milquetoast response of Democrats has been all about rolling their eyes and plodding forward without savagely condemning Republicans for their sour grapes hissy fit.

Correction: Earlier this week, the Rude Pundit erroneously called the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph "staged." However, as several rude readers pointed out, the photographer says it was not, and all evidence points to that being the case. Either way, Glenn Beck is still a motherfucker.

3/24/2010

Sore Losers Don't Even Know When They've Lost:Chuck Norris, whose cock and balls are so small that he could fuck a mouse, writes in his "column" this week (if by "column," you mean, "the sad rantings of a has-been exercise equipment salesman") about "a storm coming to Washington." He writes about "masses of American citizens and patriots who will continue to swarm tyranny (Democrat and Republican) until it is squeezed out of our nation, just as it was during the American Revolution." Norris perhaps can be excused for having brain damage from all those karate kicks, so he's probably conflating reality with The Octagon.

But the last few days have been filled with an uptick in violent rhetoric on the right about how to fight and defeat and target and crush and eliminate those who voted for the health care reform bill. Noted sucker of whore toes, Dick Morris, and Eileen McCann (whoever the fuck she is) use Winston Churchill's war memoir to prop up the right's feelings. (They also predict "the defeat of more than 50 of their congressmen, the switch of Senate control and Republican domination for decades" in the wake of the health care vote. If Morris is wrong, you think anyone will stop having his fat fucking face on Fox "news"?) Tony Blankley also invokes Churchill and adds, "now and here is where we must battle for our freedom," although he hedges on the method: "Not, pray God, with bullets, but with words and ideas." Just like Churchill, no?

Over at RedState.com, future CNN presence Erick "Erick" Erickson said on Sunday, "There is a God, there is good, and there will be a last day. And on that last day we will win. Victory comes though we know not when. So we must be happy warriors until the end — warriors willing to fight with a smile and willingness to sacrifice for freedom. We have not yet begun to fight." He thinks some Republicans are still too moderate and need to be replaced with conservatives. Apparently, sacrificing for freedom doesn't mean a slight increase in the tax rate for the wealthy in order to provide for those without access to regular health care.

What else? Sarah Palin did something retarded, which is a little like saying "Sarah Palin breathed." Her SarahPAC (motto: "You think these hair styles are cheap?") has a poster up on Facebook (of course) that uses gun crosshairs to demonstrate where to target members of Congress for "defeat." Or shooting. Either way. The poster says, "It's time to take a stand," to which one wants to respond, "Um, didn't you already take a stand and lose?"

More offices of Democrats have been targeted by brick throwing idiots. Bart Stupak has received death threats. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all of their wannabes are declaring Democrats and liberals enemies of the United States. Somebody is going to get fucking killed, and it ain't gonna be Beck, even if he implies Barack Obama wants to shiv him.

We on the left used the rhetoric of battle during the Bush administration. But we used it when people were actually being killed and tortured by our nation. There's a vast qualitative difference to saying you are going to fight against people who lied us into war and saying you are going to take down those who are trying to get health care to poor people.

What this belies is the point the Rude Pundit's been making again and again: not one of these mass actions is going to happen. There will continue to be incidents, yes, and some of them may even veer into what we might call, if we weren't such racists, "terrorism." But mostly, this is done, this health care battle. The last stand happened. The battle was joined. The war was fought. And we won. And you lost, dear conservatives. Now, stop trying to dictate the terms of your defeat.

3/23/2010

Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched, Health Care Edition (Celebrating the Passage of a Flawed But Necessary Bill, Part 2):Watching Glenn Beck on his Fox "news" show last night was not unlike watching a bulimic twenty year-old force herself to vomit even when she has nothing left in her stomach to puke up. Sure, the terrible retching sounds are there, and maybe a little bile will come up, but there comes a point where, no matter how hard you try, the effort's useless. It's pathetic to watch, you know? And all you think is, "Goddamn, why don't you get some help?"

One can say that Beck's been running on empty for a while now, but last night, his first show post-health care reform passage, was something a bit different. See, because the Rude Pundit believes that Beck wants to instigate violence, but he can't do that because there's an actual legal line he can't cross. So, instead, he's got to work people into a froth, into an uncomprehending Neanderthal rage that needs to lash out its instinctual desire for blood. The Rude Pundit thought, "Someone's gotta rhino tranq this motherfucker before he hurts himself and others."

Oh, it was fucking hilarious, to be sure. Unless you are sitting there in your Glenn Beck snuggie with your Glenn Beck mug filled with Glenn Beck-brand hot chocolate and your Saul Alinsky toilet paper in the bathroom, there's no way to react to Beck's hysteria than with loud guffaws. Because how else can you respond when Beck compares the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware and one of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, as well as the photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima - in other words, two fake pictures and a staged one - to Nancy Pelosi holding a giant gavel as she walks with Steny Hoyer and John Lewis? His point? That the first three were moments of courage and how a laughing Pelosi doesn't stand up to those bits of history.

No, seriously, Beck decided that the only proper way to contextualize the celebration over the passage of the health care reform bill was to say that it sucks compared to fighting the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. A rational person might say, "What the fuck are you talking about?" And if it makes any sense to you, then fuck you.

Beck went on to say, "They say this bill is historic and that Sunday was a historic day. I think they're exactly right. But you know what other days were historic?" Then, shit you not, he showed pictures of Pearl Harbor, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (that one doesn't show up on the Fox "news" transcript), Neville Chamberlain, and Jimmy Carter's inauguration. Finally, he showed the Hindenburg burning and said it was the passage of Medicare and Medicaid. Again, how do you argue with that? By saying that ensuring that more Americans have access to health insurance seems very much unlike Japan bombing our soldiers? No, you can't engage because any counter argument has to in some way acknowledge that Beck is operating under a semblance of logic.

And so it went, with Beck saying that America is over, that we're in a war now, blah, blah, blah. He quoted Thomas Paine's Common Sense again because, obviously, it's the only thing he's ever read by Paine. He kept invoking an America from his childhood and how all of "us" thought that if we acted a certain way, the good guys would always win. "The bad guys won," Beck sighed.

However, maybe Beck is right about something. Maybe the good guys did win,as they're supposed to in his American paradigm. Maybe, just maybe, Beck's right about that. And maybe, just maybe, Beck is actually the bad guy.

(Side note: Beck was obsessed with Jimmy Carter yesterday, constantly mocking the idea that we elected "a peanut farmer" president. He started his rant by talking about Carter and Michael Moore's "fat cottage cheese ass." The Rude Pundit makes no assumptions about the relative smoothness or dimpled-ness of Moore's buttocks, but Beck seemed awfully, disturbingly sure of himself.)

3/22/2010

Celebrating the Passage of a Flawed But Necessary Bill, Part 1: Taunting:So, c'mon, Tea Party fuckers, where's your war? Are you waiting for marching orders from Glenn Beck? Didn't Nancy Pelosi just deliver 'em to you with a couple of votes to spare? The Senate bill's been passed. Health care reform is the law of the land. The Senate's just adding a few geegaws and excising a few lumps. Bring this shit on, you teabaggers with your mouths so full of Rush Limbaugh's saggy, useless balls and eyes so blinded by the reflection of klieg lights off Sarah Palin's glaring glasses and ears too numb by the subhuman grunting that goes on around you at your despicable rallies of hatred that you've become deaf, dumb, and blind to the reality of your own lives.

Instead, we're gonna see the actions of a bunch of cowardly cunts, led by men like the Foghorn Leghorn-sounding cocksucker who called Bart Stupak "baby killer" for voting for the bill (when Stupak ought to be more correctly called, "woman-hater") and won't even man up to admit that he did it. Or the craven vandals who threw bricks through the windows of Representative Louise Slaughter's Niagara Falls office and Democratic Party headquarters in Rochester, NY.

Or, even worse, the knuckle-dragging yahoos who got their rocks off by calling John Lewis "nigger" and Barney Frank "faggot" in halls of congressional offices. Yeah, the Rude Pundit bets that nigger guy and faggot guy saw each other across the lobby from each other and abandoned their "Kill the Bill" signs to rush into a janitor's closet, with faggot guy bending over a shelf and dropping his pants, telling nigger guy, "Fuck me, man, it won't make you a faggot." And nigger guy, resting his Coors beer gut against faggot guy's coccyx, started fucking away, his sweaty, hairy stomach rubbing, so big that he couldn't even lean in to give faggot guy a decent reacharound. No, of course, when you're balls deep in the ass of a fellow imbecile, it's hard to think about going off to fight the new Civil War.

So, c'mon, you town hall patriots, where's the guns your signs promised? What are you waiting for? Or is it that your cause is lost? Is it that it's time for you to get the fuck home and go work your shitty paying jobs while you still have them? Is it that it was just talk and a good picket sign all along and you're all just frightened, cornered, irrelevant cogs in a machine that was slick with the rancid grease of manipulation?

And, while desperate tools like John McCain pledge to repeal the bill, while court challenges await as Virginia questions why its college graduates ought to be under their parents' health insurance or Florida decides that its senior citizens should still have a donut hole in their prescription drug plane or Utah can't understand why insurers should have to cover its children with pre-existing conditions or Oklahoma thinks that insurance companies should be able to drop coverage for its sick citizens, while the Republican party wrecks itself over its failure to rein in those who threaten violence and insanity, we can say we defeated mob rule and our own despair. And, for a moment, we can crack open a beer to celebrate before we work to make the damn thing better.

3/19/2010

The Vote on Health Care Reform: The End of the Tea Party?:

Honestly, can you imagine what the anti-health care reform protests would be like if the House was about to actually pass a single-payer bill? Those fat and/or old fuckers up there in their Playskool colonist hats and ready-made "Kill the Bill" signs would be undulating and wheeling around with guns, threatening to shoot shit up until it was time for Country Buffet to open. Jesus, they're already threatening war over the small steps the current bill takes in making the American health insurance system less savage. Glenn Beck has called this as much of "a turning point" in American history as "the Civil War." So that means that offering a subsidy to people to buy into a health insurance exchange that's regulated by the federal government is the same as slavery?

Here's what's going to happen after the vote on the reconciliation bill in the House on Sunday: Almost every Tea Partyer who was out there protesting will go the fuck away. They will devote whatever energy they have left to posting comments on blogs and Facebook pages. Their leaders, desperate to still be relevant and still draw a paycheck, will try to come up with some other phantom issue to whip up enthusiasm. But once it passes, no one will give a shit except the people it helps. The Civil War won't be re-fought. The Constitution won't be shredded. One or two states might try to force their misinterpretation of the 10th Amendment. Soon, Beck and Hannity and Michele Bachmann and Steve King will discover another Republic-ending crisis, probably immigration reform, and we'll start the magical cycle all over again.

Meanwhile, those poor, ignorant bitches and bastards in the photo up there will shuffle home, curse the process, and, like good corporate tools, continue to suck down fast food and sodas and buy shit they don't need because it's cheaply made in China and sold at Wal-Mart and proudly drive gas-devouring vehicles and keep their children stupid and tell themselves that they aren't the problem, no, they are the solution, wondering how to fill the desperate couple of hours between the end of Limbaugh's radio show and the start of Beck's TV rants, despising those who are attempting to do something for them and their neighbors, wondering where their country went, when, after all, this is where it's gone.

For a couple of them, the day will come when they lose their jobs. And the COBRA runs out. And maybe for a moment they panic about where they're going to get health insurance for themselves and their families. And then it will hit them, that "oh, yeah, there's that" and it just might end up okay. But, like the dunces who want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare, they will go on thinking the same, doing the same, never learning, never changing.

We are Americans, after all. Our swinish laziness, blissful ignorance, and blithely cruel selfishness is something our soldiers are fighting and dying for right now.

It's okay. The rest of us will be out here trying to do good, even for those who would like to see our blood discolor the streets.

3/18/2010

Obama on Fox "News"(or Python Eats Kangaroo):

Yes, holy shit, that is a photo of a python engorging an entire kangaroo. And it more or less represents what happened when President Obama sat down for an interview with whiny-voiced Bret "Lump o' Flesh Face" Baier of Fox "news," which is owned by noted Aussie-born tyrant Rupert Murdoch.

First off, let's just say that Baier interviewed a president like a president ought to be interviewed, with the news person as an aggressive antagonist and questioner, not taking what the president says at face value. Truly, honestly, Baier was at least in the ballpark of how, say, BBC journalists talk to their leaders. And however irritating Baier's interruptions were, Obama recognized, at the end, that this was the way it's supposed to go. "That's OK. That's your job," Obama told him after Baier apologized for doing so.

Of course, any time a reporter from anywhere dared to question George W. Bush with the same persistence that Baier used with Obama, it was an outrage, like a midget had punched Bush in the nuts. Remember when Irish reporter Carol Coleman took apart Bush and the White House actually lodged a formal complaint with the Irish Embassy? Now, of course, it's totally okay to confront the president repeatedly, and the right will gleefully cheer it on, as if yelping, "Yeah, make him your bitch, Ailes."

However, Baier's agenda was to get Barack Obama to talk about the "deem and pass" rule, not health care reform. The problem for Baier was that Obama didn't give a shit about how the bill is voted on, just that it's voted on. It wasn't that Obama wouldn't answer the question. He did. He just didn't give Baier the answers he wanted. As Baier tried to make health care legislation about how the rules of Congress are used, Obama offered, "Bret, I've got to say to you there are a lot more people who are concerned about the fact that they may be losing their house or going bankrupt because of health care." Whatever hard-on Baier might have had was smacked into flaccidness.

It literally got to the point where Baier was just incoherently tossing out teabagger talking points. It was like Baier had a stroke as Roger Ailes screamed in his ear to attack harder. "Deem and pass Senate reconciliation and we don't know exactly what's in the fix bill," he sputtered out. A moment later, all Baier could manage to say was "This is one-sixth of the U.S. economy, sir. One-sixth." By the end, one wouldn't have been surprised if Baier had been curled up on the floor, shitting himself, bleeding out of his eyes, babbling and weeping, "Nebraska compromise...deem and pass...Medicare cuts...please make the hurting stop...Please don't let him swallow me whole...kill me first..."

Essentially, Baier, in doing the bidding of his tubby master, only wanted to talk around the bill. There was very little about what is actually in the bill. That was limited to trying to get Obama to decry every specific deal made for individual states. And while Obama did say that the Nebraska deal was idiotic, he didn't back down on all of them, like the funds for places hit by natural disasters, like Louisiana. This made Baier start shorting out, with Obama staring at his fizzing brain. Baier started just tossing out states, like Florida and "Connecticut, Montana? I mean, there are a lot of deals in here, Mr. President, that people have issues about."

There was a sad air of desperation to Baier's approach, like he had been told in the Fox locker room that he'd be able to fuck Obama's face when he got the president alone in a room, but it turned out that not only would his cock find no mouth to plunge into, he'd get his balls twisted in the process. And then he'd get his bare ass spanked.

But, as Obama essentially said at the end, you can't blame a jerk-off for trying. The interview ended with Baier sadly shuffling down a hall in the White House, pants around his ankles, on his way to the exit.

3/17/2010

One More Goddamn Post About Health Care Reform (The End Is Nigh?):In poker, when you decide you're going to bluff on your crap hand, you have to ask yourself your level of commitment to the bluff. You have to ask how far you are willing to go with your bets. Because no matter how good you are at bluffing, someday, someone will call you on it, see you, and raise you. And when that happens, you have a choice: you can fold and walk away, or you can raise them and try to bully your way into winning the hand, hoping to scare them off without needing to show your cards. Simply put, you've gotta know when your hand is played out.

The Republicans have been playing a bluff game throughout the entire health care debate. On every substantive issue, they have deliberately lied about the facts behind their opposition to health care reform, through death panels, through overstating the cost, through uninformed opposition (who, when informed, inevitably support the pieces of the President's plan). And, as they won hand after hand, it looked as if they were gonna win the entire game. But then something strange happened when Barack Obama decided, after Republicans thought they had achieved Scott Brownitopia, decided to call the bluff. The cocky confidence of the lies began to disappear, and Republicans realized they had dug themselves into a fight that they could very well lose. Now, Republicans are recklessly spouting every possible argument against health care reform (even that it's "demonic"), as well as condemning the very rules by which the Congress operates, rules the Republicans know very well are legit.

Really, what we're seeing is the GOP behaving like children trying to avoid getting their asses spanked. Their arguments, on a basic rhetorical level, are rank with the shit smell of desperate and deliberate stupidity. One of their arguments against reconciliation in the Senate? That it's never been used on anything this big and expensive before. The actual rule doesn't specify how much a bill can cost. Do Republicans get to decide on what's the upper limit on the price of something passed under reconciliation? Hey, you know how you get to make that decision? By being in the majority. The same thing is going on now with the whole absurd battle over the "deem and pass" rule in the House. Republicans want to discredit everything in their rape-and-pillage march to stop the bill. Delegitimize it and burn it and let the teabaggers suck on the bones.

They are fucking scared to death right now. Mitch McConnell's tiny balls recede into his torso and John Boehner turns from pumpkin color to peach out of fear because, if health care reform passes, they know that most people will just move on to the next battle and leave this one behind. Despite their threats, there is no campaign to be had on repealing it.

Finally, as Dennis Kucinich has now come around to being able to vote for the Senate bill (and you can bet there's gonna be a convulsion in Left Blogsylvania about his flip-flop), it needs to be repeated: this is not a good bill. This is a huge payday to the very corporations who should be dissolved and whose CEOs should be ass-fucked by angry baboons with jungle crabs and then forced to bleed and itch without access to even a first aid kit.

But beyond the notions that, yes, eventually, and not fast enough, tens of millions of people will have insurance that they didn't before, and, yes, eventually, and not fast enough, the rules of business for health insurance companies will change for the better, there's this: Democrats are voting to demonstrate that the very concept of health care reform can be voted on. Let it go this time, and you're saying that it's radioactive. No one will touch it.

See, once you show that it's okay to do something like this, you can do it again, not only with health care, but with jobs and the environment and immigration and more. There is a chance that this is the beginning of some momentum, not the end, like that moment when you've been fucking all night and you think you're too tired to get to orgasm and then that second wind hits you and you just want it, you want to feel pulsation and rush and you're not gonna stop until it happens.

To go back to the poker game, at some point in the betting, a player's gonna call on the bluffer. And the bluffer's gonna have to show that his cards are shit, that he was lying, that he had nothing. And then the pot goes to the person who had the better hand all along.

Another Goddamn Post on Health Care Reform:Bart Stupak's position on the health care reform bill long ago left the realm of principled opposition and entered the realm of ego-fluffing grandstanding. How do you get time on Fox "news"? By being the mighty Democrat who loves him the fetuses and stands up to mean ol' Nancy Pelosi.

Just to be clear here on what Stupak and radical anti-choicers are pissy about: Both the House and Senate bills specifically, clearly, and redundantly ban any of your precious tax dollars from being used to cover the cost of abortion, which is still, you know, a legal medical procedure. The question comes down to federal subsidies that will be given to individuals to purchase health insurance in the new exchanges. The House bill says that the subsidies cannot be used for any insurance plan that covers elective abortion, which means that abortion coverage simply will not be available. The Senate bill says that subsidies can be used for insurance plans that cover elective abortion, but you have to purchase a separate abortion policy without your subsidy. In other words, Stupak's opposition is predicated on the idea that the Senate bill gives money to insurance plans that cover abortion, even if that money cannot, by law, be used for abortion, but those funds presumably free up other money that will most definitely be used only for aborting white babies. Or something like that. Thus, in the most indirect method possible, Stupak can claim that the Senate bill funds abortion, even though it says it doesn't. It's like not buying gas at Citgo because you think Hugo Chavez will use your money for new guayaberas. Got it? Fuck no? Good. Then let's continue.

Funny thing about Stupak is that back when the Senate bill was first passed, he said this: "One key difference between the House and Senate bills is that the Senate bill includes no public health insurance option. Now that the House and Senate have passed their respective bills, negotiations will begin to craft one final health care bill." Notice the lack of mention of abortion at all there. In other words, Stupak wasn't so worried about the fetuses in the pre-Scott Brown era, when he had significantly less power.

Now Stupak has gone paranoiac. The Michigan Congressman told the National Review that he's heard from Democratic members of the House, "If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing. Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue--come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we're talking about."

This caused the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto to go the full Beck nutzoid in a charming piece titled "ObamaCare and Eugenics": In order to be effective, a policy of using abortion as a cost-cutting measure would have to aim at preventing the birth of babies with such pre-existing conditions. The goal would be not a reduction in the number of babies, but an 'improvement' in the 'quality' (narrowly defined in economic terms) of the babies who are born. This is known as eugenics." And this is known as "fucktarded bullshit," or "my masturbatory fantasy about how eeeevil Barack Obama is." The Rude Pundit's pretty sure this would be a better argument if the government were actually going to run a public option health insurance program, since then it would directly cost the government millions more. And Stupak supports the public option.

Taranto demonstrates just how hysterical a drama queen he is when he goes on, "It's not hard to imagine the federal government's establishing counseling protocols designed to encourage abortion in certain situations--for example, informing a woman after a Down syndrome diagnosis of the burdens (but not the joys) of rearing a child with that condition." It takes a certain kind of shit-flinging madness to advocate that future parents of a child with Down syndrome not be informed of the particular burdens that they will have to deal with. It takes an even greater madness to equate such information with eugenics, as if making an informed decision on whether or not to have a Down syndrome child is the same as breeding for blond hair and blue eyes.

A simple question here for Taranto and for Stupak and his dwindling minions: How is it pro-life to oppose giving some form of health care coverage to tens of millions of people, including future babies?

Tomorrow: Yes, one more goddamn post on health care reform. This time about how much the Senate bill sucks and how much it needs to be passed.

3/15/2010

Five Totally Bugfuck Insane Quotes from a Single Glenn Beck Segment:From his The One Thingsegment on Thursday, March 11, 2010 (written out as short poems with comments; taken from Nexis, which is different than the slightly more coherent version transcribed on the Fox "news" website):

1. "During normal times, kooks that say this kind stuffis good brushed aside. But history shows ustime and time again,if you add two elements, fearand hunger -- all people will listen to anybodywho says I have the answer. I'm going to giveyou an example. When I say 'anybody,'I mean anybody."

Comment: Glenn Beck saying this to his audience is like a copperhead explaining why you should avoid the scorpions.

2. (Showing a picture of Jesus and Adolf Hitler)"Recognize these two cats? One is good and oneis incredible evil. But they have one thing in common.If you are in a system of crisis where there is fearand hunger, both have the ability to look at you and say,'I'll save you. I have the answer. I knowwhy this is happening to you. Come follow me.'And when you're hungryand afraid, it's not as easyto tell the differencebetween these two.But there is a huge difference.But you have to know what those differences are nowbefore you're hungryand afraid."

Comment: Of course, subtle things like Jesus telling everyone to love their neighbor and Hitler telling Germans to kill theirs did make it difficult to tell the difference between those two cats.

3. "In the 1930s and today, two people saythey have the answer.In 1930s, this guy.Today, it's this guy.FDR and Barack Obama.This guy said happy days are hereagain. He this one just said the worstis behind us.America is extremely fragile right now."

Comment: Beck's historical analogies are as flaccid as a weeping old man's cock in the mouth of a bitter young heroin addict that the old man's paid to suck him off. But because he can say that FDR and Obama said something similar, that must mean they are similar. It's history for people who know shit about history.

4. "Ten years ago -- 10 years ago,this stuff wasridiculous. Five years ago, sixyears ago, this was soundinga little more reasonable, but still.Now? There are people watching now that are,you know,in their mom's basementand they're blogging right now.And I'm sure critics are going to call meall sort of names.And that's fine."

Comment: More Cheetos, Mom. Glenn Beck said it's cool.

5. "This isn't the first time on historywe were on the edge of making these choicesin our own country.But only because of our reliance on Godand our understanding of this period,the Constitution,that we survive last time.But, oh, as you will see tonight,we came very, very closeto not surviving."

Comment: This was followed by another segment about American nearly descending into fascism because of some fringe figure's ability to get people to listen to him. There were lots of Nazis marching. Not in America. But, oh, fuck, it could have been. For some reason. Then Beck said it was wrong to compare him to Father Coughlin because Coughlin was too liberal.

Summation: If a liberal was given a show to spout these kinds of conspiracy theories about the government, he or she would be burned in effigy, if not in actuality.

3/12/2010

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Teabag a Komodo Dragon:

Hey, what does the Tea Party and the Republican National Committee have in common with Muslim students in Indonesia? The ability to photoshop Barack Obama's face into the face of a villain from The Dark Knight. Oh, that and hatred of President Obama. Yep, Glenn Beck and Fikri Ahmad Irhamul are like rancid peas in a filthy pod.

One supposes that every right-wing tool running around America declaring that Obama is surrendering the United States to Islam and allowing Osama bin Laden to sodomize our veiled daughters never actually asked, you know, Muslims overseas what they thought. And they're not happy with Obama, even if he was born in Indonesia. Ahead of a now-delayed trip to the country where, in reality, he did live for a few years, small but lively protests have erupted. "Just like Bush, he is a war president and an enemy of Islam," said Irhamul, the protest leader in Jakarta. "He sent thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan, and many of our Muslim brothers have died because of him." Hey, take a note, teabaggers: they're actually rallying against something real, not imaginary, like Obama's "socialism."

They so despise Obama that they're throwing shoes at his image and, yes, walking around with posters showing him as Two-Face, which at least makes more sense than the Tea Party's Obama/Joker one.

Of course, the crazed teabaggers and their GOP and media enablers will merely say that this proves Obama has failed in uniting the world. And we should point out that at least he's brought together conservative nutzoids and Muslim radicals, who, indeed, are two sides of the same coin.

Al-Qaeda, Liz Cheney, and American Failure:It's hard to pinpoint, this general feeling of anxiety and apprehension that has afflicted Americans. Joblessness, Congressional paralysis, airwaves filled with bickering phantoms all day and all night, it's all so very hard to take. But for the Rude Pundit, there's one thing that overwhelms him more often than all the rest. He's tired of us being such pussies about terrorism. Or, to put it more precisely, it's exhausting to see politicians and citizens toss away our rights, our freedoms, our Constitutional guarantees, all because a couple of goat fuckers learned from the CIA how to blow shit up. He's tired of surrendering to the thugs. Lately, in America, every day is like getting your lunch money stolen by the bullies.

Our unending state of stress-out is al-Qaeda's greatest victory against the United States. As the AP reports today, al-Qaeda got one big message from the Underwear Bomber's failure: "the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be: Big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good."

Yeah, it seems like the simple cave dwellers have figured out big, complex, allegedly bad-ass America: we're just a bunch of sticky fat kids crying because our ice cream fell off the cone. That wedgie-bait, Adam Gadahn (nee "Pearlman"), an American in al-Qaeda, taunted, "Even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy." He may be a traitorous asshole who can't grow a decent beard, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. Ask anyone who was at Newark Airport in January, where security imprisoned thousands of innocent people for six hours because some idiot took a shortcut.

The whole history of our post-9/11 brain damage doesn't need to be rehashed here. But the continuing use of terrorism as a political tool, and the success it has, speaks a great deal about the character of the nation. Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's hysterical attack on the Justice Department is part of the right's attempt to undermine the credibility and the legitimacy of the Obama administration. Without demonstrating in any way that the "al-Qaeda 7," the DOJ lawyers who did pro-bono work for Gitmo detainees, have broken any laws or ethics rules, young Cheney is doing the same work as old Cheney, that Dick: giving al-Qaeda legitimacy as a force in determining the way the United States functions.

Indeed, the right has so successfully torqued the country into what our enemies believe it is, it's almost as if the GOP is a subversive arm of al-Qaeda. They have nearly bankrupted us, thus making any great social advances impossible; they have turned mild dissent into sedition; and they have turned the Constitution into a loophole-ridden contract, filled with more fine print than a subprime mortgage. They did most of that shit when they were in power. Now, out of power, the right is seeking, as it did in the Clinton years, but even more insidiously, to undermine the very functioning of government. And, frankly, it ain't like the Obama administration is doing a whole lot to stand up to these political forces. Close Gitmo. Try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York. Say, "Fuck you, cowards everywhere. This is what a country does that ain't intimidated."

Here's the dirty secret: we were pretty fucking safe prior to 9/11. We aren't really much more safe after. We should be vigilant and strong. We should be infiltrating groups and breaking them up. We should be negotiating with other countries. Ultimately, though, you can use all the technological geegaws in the world, you can get DNA and feces samples of everyone coming into the country, you can drown every detainee, but you're not gonna stop the lone fucker who wants to crash a plane or blow up his balls. It's the price of living in these armed times.

And, honestly, on the whole, for those of us who remember the Cold War, it's a little easier to live with the odds of a terrorist attack versus the odds of an earth-destroying nuclear war. (But we were still told on a daily basis to bug out over Commies.) At some point, we have to decide if we are a nation of principle or a nation that capitulates to the merest threats.

3/10/2010

Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (Massa Edition):Yesterday's meeting of demi-minds, when ex-Rep. Eric Massa went on Glenn Beck's Fox "news" thing, was like watching Borat for the first time. You didn't know who to laugh at more, but the whole thing was queasily delightful. In the end, the hour said very little about Massa and far, far more about the delusions of Beck and of his brand of right-wing victimization than anything else.

Massa is just a pathetic figure, even if he holds positions that would make Dennis Kucinich proud. Of one of the charges against him, he said, "Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy." Five middle-aged men living together in DC, rolling around on the floor? It's either gangbang foreplay or it's brain damage. Even more fun was Massa proudly showing Beck an album of photos from his Navy days when Massa took part in a 1983 "crossing the line ceremony." That's when a ship crosses the equator, and there's a Bacchanalian ritual for the sailors who do so for the first time. Or, as Massa said, "Can you imagine transporting back to this today? It looks like an orgy in Caligula...And anybody who's been in the Navy knows it."

Yep, Massa is defending himself with one of the most homoerotic events that shipfuls of seamen participate in: "As the equator crossing ceremony began, for instance, it was common for initiates to pile upon each other and then be ordered to simulate sodomy. Featured in 'Bitch Beauty Contests,' dressing in drag was expected in the ceremony, often overseen by Neptune’s Court, including a Queen who gives mocking hugs and kisses to the King. Initiates were also told to simulate an 'elephant walk' in which a line of men moved while holding the genitals of the person in front of them or having a finger in his anus. To 'disinfect' or 'sanitize' selected individuals, senior sailors sometimes forced an initiate to strip and put tubes and other objects in the initiate’s rear end." Seriously, the Rude Pundit's been to actual gay orgies that were straighter.

But Massa is just another simpering closet case who will now go on to wreck his family because he can't deal with who he really is. The real result of the interview is to demonstrate, vividly, just how arrogant, narcissistic, and worthless Glenn Beck is and the utter failure of his model of television news-raping.

Beck was hyping the interview because he cravenly saw the Massa story as another way to pump up his conspiracy theories about the eeevil Obama administration. Without knowing the facts, or even seemingly having his staff do a pre-interview, on Monday, Beck promised, "I don't know the guy. But this is a moment that will decide the course of this nation possibly...You need to hear the explanations and the stories he told me today. I ask you, if you are a Republican or a Democrat, please listen to him and decide for yourself. Someone needs to expose the game. And Massa is doing it." You get that? Beck said that the Eric Massa story had the potential to change the country. And only Glenn Beck has the balls to allow this bull a free run around the china shop.

Even as the hour was beginning yesterday, Beck was fluffing the Massa tale like a crack whore with a rock-holding old man out of Viagra. "Is there anything new to his charges of corruption? We've told you about corruption on this program over and over and over again. When he says he's been intimidated -- oh, I believe it, because I've seen it firsthand myself," Beck offered, giving credibility to someone who was the victim of "nothing but hearsay, whispers and rumors. I'm going to be asking pointed questions today. But shouldn't a man be expected to face his accusers? Or is this now just a country of whisper campaigns?" Actually, Massa refused to face his accusers because he resigned, but that was just part of the conspiracy for Beck.

Then the interview started and, almost instantly, even a fucktard like Beck knew that the whole hour was going down in flames. When Massa showed Beck that book of the equator-crossing ceremony, the fat-faced bastard looked like he was gonna vomit. The rest of the show was a train wreck where the conductor and the guy in the caboose were crushed. Beck attempted a late rally, offering after a break, "He claims nothing happened. It's up to you to decide, I guess, if we're going to try this in a court of public opinion, which I think is un-American." Beck demonstrated that there's a reason that reporters do their jobs sometimes: in order to prevent such wrecks from occurring. Beck's belief in Massa was rewarded with squirming defensiveness, and the path of the nation seemed pretty damn stable.

But what became clear is that Beck doesn't have control of the story he is trying to create. That his cut-and-dried world of corrupt insiders and noble outsiders is an illusion. That what he believes, as clearly as ever, is, like Massa, a bundle of lies and hubris, a mental illness masked with chalk and bile.

3/09/2010

Iraqi Elections: Ejaculating on Our Faces and Telling Us It's Diamonds:Oh, luscious straight women, you know how it goes. You're in the bedroom with this hot guy who's making all kinds of promises about how much he loves to eat pussy. Man, if sex was a smorgasbord, all he'd put on his plate is a pile of pussy. At least, that's what he says. But before he goes down on you, because he's gonna be so goddamned good, he wants you to blow him first. Well, you figure, at some point, that was gonna happen, and since the rewards are journey on clit-tweak express and an epileptic seizure of an orgasm, why not? So you start giving head, and you realize a few minutes in that this is not gonna be a quick task. Oh, no. You're deep-throating and nibbling and sucking on balls, and he's moaning, telling you how good it feels, how good you are, how he's gonna come soon. But he ain't coming. You know the rest of this. How you bob on his knob and yank on his crank until you're just exhausted. How, finally, after he's jacked himself off into your mouth, he finally shoots a load right in your face, telling you how good you look glistening with his semen. And you know the ending: it's your turn and this fucker doesn't know a labia from the hole in his pillow he must have practiced on. The evening ends with him satisfied and you with chapped lips above and below. You not only didn't come, but you found the whole experience a waste of time; the only cold comfort is when he says, "Damn, you know how to suck a dick." Yeah, thanks. There is that.

Right now, the coverage of Iraq is all about how a democracy is slouching its way out of the muck left behind by all of our interference in that country (going back to our Frankenstein monster, Saddam Hussein). Newsweek's grossly exaggerated cover that read "Victory At Last," with its photo of a sauntering George W. Bush on that aircraft carrier, is perhaps the most egregious example of supposedly objective news telling us how our dick sucking lips are so fucking sweet. The article itself, while hedging a bit on the headline, is still replete with examples of how this apparently lovely, if spotted, moth is emerging from its gory cocoon. (It's interesting that one of the article's writers, Christopher Dickey, also has a piece on how the battle for control of oil could do in these baby steps.)

"That is good news for Iraqis," says the New York Times of Sunni participation in this week's elections. The Washington Timesopines, "Nothing says 'mission accomplished' more than a low-key election in a country recently beset by nationwide conflict." Dale McFeatters of Scripps-Howard writes, "[I]f democracy does take hold in Iraq, this election and those that follow will become the reason we fought this war."

The Rude Pundit received a phone call yesterday from his friend Neil, who had a different opinion of the purple-fingers of freedom: "Wasn't the war supposed to make America safer? What the fuck?" He's right. On a "hey, good for you" level, the Iraqi elections are just super. But no one in Washington is now declaring that we are in any way safer because we spent trillions of dollars and got thousands of Americans killed or wounded. We weren't sold the war on the basis of Iraq needing a vote box security force. It was weapons of mass destruction, and then it was generic American safety. Now it's for the glory of democracy. The desperate panic of 2003 that led the nation to recklessly go for the big trophy of security has given way to the small consolation prizes of today. Whatever the fuck you wanna call Iraq, it ain't victory in any way we were supposed to measure it.

But, hey, good for you, Iraq. You had an election with only a few dozen people getting killed. And, war supporters, including ones who now regret their votes, you enjoyed getting your dicks sucked. But now that the rest of us are sitting here with jizz on our faces, we're pretty sure we're not gonna get our rocks off.

3/08/2010

In Brief: Why the Cheney Family Ought to Be Moe-Slapped:So in 1986, regarding the weapons the United States, through the CIA, was sending to the "rebels" in Afghanistan who were then engaged in their years-long war with the Soviet Union, the New York Timesreported that Representative Richard Cheney "believes American interests are likely to be increasingly tied to support of anti-Soviet forces in the third world."

On February 4, 1988, on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, talking about the "rebels" driving back the Soviet Union, Rep. Cheney said, "A key point on Afghanistan and the Afghan move: the Mujahadeen have stopped Soviet aggression dead in its tracks, and the Soviets are talking about withdrawing. But we sent them one hell of a lot more than boots and bandages to get that done." In 1990, when he was George Bush the Smarter's Secretary of Defense, Cheney was an advocate for the policy of arming the "rebels" in Afghanistan.

In other words, when Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz, and her bullshit organization, Keep America Safe, go the full McCarthy in slandering Department of Justice attorneys, simply because they abided by the Constitution and the Supreme Court in providing a defense for Gitmoites, and condemning them as terrorist abettors, she should probably ask dear old dad, "Umm, why the fuck did you arm al-Qaeda and help make 9/11 possible?"

3/05/2010

Karl Rove Is Answered by Rock and Roll, Man:In celebration of the new autobiography by globby pustule of bacterial infection Karl Rove, a couple of producers, including the amazingly-named Conan Neutron, have put together an album/digital download of tracks by indy rock bands. Titled, like Rove's book, Courage and Consequence, the music responds to Rove's career with rage and righteousness and fun, with songs like "Biggest Asshole in the World" and "Forget the Naughts."

You can download the album here, but if you buy the physical copy, you get original liner notes written by the Rude Pundit.

Think of Karl Rove: Courage and Consequence as the soundtrack for the end of an era that never seems to end.

Conservatives Want You to Stop Attacking Their Women:You know, it's adorable whenever conservatives claim sexism and racism when angry liberals respond to right-wingers who advocate actual sexist and racist policies. Because no matter how much name-calling a hacked-off Keith Olbermann might engage in, it's a piss drop in a bucket filled with the diarrhea of misogyny shot out of the mouths of conservatives.

So Michelle Malkin mentions an article from the right-wing "watchdog," the Culture and Media Institute (motto: "No, I've never heard of the Culture and Media Institute either"), which celebrates Women's History Month by listing "The Ten Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women."

Strangely, most of the attacks are against Michelle Malkin, including a Playboy article where she is listed as hate-fuckable, a Matt Taibbi blog post that envisions her with balls in her mouth for supporting tea baggers, a Bonnie Erbe blog post that scolds the Playboy article with the exception of Malkin's inclusion, Olbermann's description of Malkin as "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it," and a tweet from Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star implying that Dick Cheney should shoot Malkin. If you're keeping track, it's pretty much a list of how much people hate Michelle Malkin, although Sarah Palin and others are mentioned. The article calls to task media figures who have referred to Liz Cheney as "Daddy's girl" and the like, as well as those who call Palin "Barbie." Sexist? Sure. Disgusting? Not so much. And, as mentioned, it includes blogs and tweets, which means that, at best, a few thousand people read most of them, and insults from comedians, which is a strange road to go down. (Comments about Ann Coulter are absent in this list of attacks on women. Make your own conclusions.)

Truly, this is amateur hour when it comes to digging up misogyny. Other than Olbermann, there's not a single person of any real influence at all there. And if calling Dick Cheney's daughter a "little girl" is the best you can do to try to discredit the left, then you've failed. For no one gets all misogynistic like right wingers who are pissed that women have any power. Shit, you could come up with a top ten of just Rush Limbaugh shooting air out of his blowhole. You could come up with a disgusting list based on mainstream media people talking about Nancy Pelosi; fuck, you could put together encyclopedias of examples of hating on Hillary Clinton.

Here's just a few, and it's not from blog posts or tweets, but from assholes who are revered and respected by conservatives and who spout their hatred to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people at once, all from 2009:

Rush Limbaugh: If Nancy Pelosi "wants fewer births, I have the way to do this and it won't require any contraception: You simply put pictures of Nancy Pelosi ... in every cheap motel room. ... That will keep birthrates down because that picture will keep a lot of things down." This is not to mention the repeated mentions of Pelosi as a "ditz" and alleging that she has had botox injections.

Limbaugh: Hillary Clinton wasn't let into Marines because "they didn't have uniforms or boots big enough to fit that butt and those ankles."

G. Gordon Liddy on Sonia Sotomayor: "Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate."

Glenn Beck in a mock conversation with Nancy Pelosi: "By the way, I put poison in your" wine. (Beck has a creepy thing about drugging people. He had previously suggested that Dennis Kucinich must have roofied Elizabeth in order to have sex with her.)

Remember: this is the mainstream shit. From people that are seen as legitimate political commentators. This doesn't even touch on blogs or Twitter feeds or Ann Coulter. It's absurd to even dare to compare attacks on right-wing women to the attacks on those from the left or, really, center. Sure, we're a bit more creative, but, in terms of sheer, sustained, vicious misogyny? It's like comparing a rat fart to a tornado.

(Note regarding the news of the day: The Rude Pundit wants to wait until Obama actually caves on military tribunals before he writes about Obama caving on military tribunals.)

3/04/2010

Slides That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Shove a Powerpoint Up Michael Steele's Ass:

As with so many things, let's apply the "What If It Was the Democrats?" test. What if it was discovered that the Democrats had given a Powerpoint presentation about fundraising describing its average donors as being easily manipulated into giving money through "fear" and that they were "reactionary" and motivated by "extreme negative feelings" towards the administration? Or that the wealthy donors were "ego-driven"? It would be the only thing we'd be talking about for the next month. We'd need resignations and apologies and Steve Doocy would have to sigh like Paul Lynde on a passive aggressive tear and Sean Hannity would have to spit all over some poor guest or other. Glenn Beck would roll on the ground and sob while connecting "fear" to "Nazis" because people were afraid of Nazis. Rush Limbaugh might even spank himself again so he can get an erection.

Of course, it wasn't the Democrats. It was the Republicans. And it's just obvious that they have contempt for Americans, who exist only as tools to be sucked dry through exploitation and fluffery, not with substance. But because it's Republicans, it will be a story for a night or two on Maddow and Olbermann and then gone, dismissed as inside baseball and "gee, don't we all do it."

Republicans are masterful at making things that are worthless discussions into republic-ending crises. The whole debate over reconciliation is just that. It's nonsense. First of all, as many have pointed out, if the House passes the Senate bill that's already been passed, the health care debate is over. There's a health care bill. Period. The president signs it and, if Schoolhouse Rock is to be believed, it's a law. Reconciliation is not going to be used for the bill. It's going to be used to change what will by then be an existing law.

But the GOP knows that you can fan the flames of fear by making a relatively common use of a Senate rule into an abrogation of democracy and oh-shit-we're-gonna-have-to-get-fucked-by-the-ghost-of-Karl-Marx. Otherwise, how would they get donations?

The Dogs Will Eat You Because They Are Dogs:In personal conversations, there's few things that set the Rude Pundit off than what happens when some seemingly normal people talk about their pets. Usually, after describing the adorable shit their dogs do, they will say something like, "Yeah, my dog is my child." And then they'll add, "I mean, really, if you think about it, it's just like having a child, except less expensive." That's followed by a laugh, like they just said the most obvious thing.

When the Rude Pundit hears this, it pisses him off. He's a dog lover, sure, but he'll say, "No, your dog is your dog. It's a dog. You know how you tell the difference between your dog and a child? If you're locked in your apartment with them and you die, your dog will eat you. Your child won't." Replace "dog" with "cat," and it's the same answer.

In other words, no matter how much you love or care for your dog or cat, you don't know what it's thinking. You impose your human frame of reference on them, but at the same time, Fido is putting you into his canine one. And you are always just one can of Alpo away from becoming meat.

When the Rude Pundit read this week about the explosion of right wing extremist groups, he thought, "It's sad, really, how quickly an animal will turn when it panics." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009." This is not to mention the 512 "active" Patriot Groups, which foster antigovernment conspiracy theories and stand around bragging about how armed they are, like the Oath Keepers, which may just be a new peak of sublimated homoeroticism, a kind of gun fetish mixed with cock worship.

See, the reason they and the Tea Party are the dogs is because they have made the leap to wanting to overthrow the government if things don't go their way. They don't want to work within the existing American system. Because if their worst fears come true, and America becomes socialist, it will be because our elected representatives voted for it, not because it was done at the point of a gun. When George W. Bush was wrecking the nation, left wing groups talked in terms of organization for elections or of impeachment. These groups talk in terms of armed resistance. And we're here, in terms of our increasingly unhinged right wing nutzoids, after only a year of the Obama presidency. When people turned to revolutionary or radical acts in the past, it was after years of war or centuries of mistreatment and the failure of any systemic means of solving the problems. In other words, these people in all these extremist groups are greedy, selfish pussies who want what they want now and don't want to do the hard work to get there.

We could say they are delusional. We could say that they are victims of the cruel capitalist system that has only gotten crueler in the three decades. We could say they have been manipulated by a media that feeds off their fear.

Instead, as Mother Jones magazine says, they are flirting with actual, honest-to-god treason. Once you start talking about overthrowing the government through any means but elections, you have ceased to part of the conversation. Actual patriotism is believing that the American form of government can work, even if that is slow and frustrating. If you don't like it, then amend the Constitution to change the way the country works. Elect people who support you. Then, if that doesn't happen, you might want to consider other means. It takes some time, not one year after the black dude was inaugurated.

But, really, motherfuckers? Guns? And those, like Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint, who fan their flames are privileged enablers who will run away like panicked kittens as soon as the dogs tear into the body.